Qualms about Leisha Jones Essay

I really wish I would've been able to make it to class today because this reading has left me struggling to find the point Leisha Jones was trying to make. The difficulty I had with the reading was Jones' sentence structure and her references to things only few people would have knowledge of. In regards to sentence structure, Jones tends to use difficult words, obscure phrases, and makes them far longer than necessary. I think she could have made her argument more clear with shorter sentences and/or more accessible words. Also, a lot of what she says is murky. I had the thought while reading that Jones herself is the only person who understands what she is trying to say. A few other readings we've had came across to me this way as well; however, in the case of those readings at least, further analyzation paid off. I left those other articles feeling I learned something valuable, meaningful, and deep, that I would have a lot to say about. Jones' essay on the other hand--aside from the last four pages, which aren't argumentative, but informative--left me with nothing that I didn't already know and certainly nothing I cared about. I had an "O..K..?" moment in other words. And the fact that I had to try to sift through all of her complicated speech just to ultimately come out with nothing of any substance was slightly frustrating. Again, the final four pages were very new to me and Im glad I was able to leave with something. The names and descriptions of different approaches (sensate, brand, polyglot) that some girls are taking in their own interactive, bildungsroman experiences with Twilight were very interesting and something I hadn't known was so extensive. All in all, I feel this reading has value--but not particularly any value for contemporary readers like us, as much as it will have for readers in the future that will in fact be interested in the ways our generation interacted with art.

Criticisms of Leisha Jones' Reader Response of Twilight

Good Afternoon Everyone,
                        I wanted to start of by going off of something Julia said while giving her presentation in class today about how she does not agree with the traditional female experiences i.e learning submissiveness, fearing sexuality and womanhood, marriage and motherhood. As a reader of Twilight I feel that Jones is completely wrong when stating that Bella is submissive. She demands from Edward to tell her everything, she makes him come back with her at the end of New Moon, in Eclipse she even wraps the Volturi around her finger by stating that she will, in time, become a vampire, and finally in Breaking Dawn she becomes a vampire which is exactly what she wanted. Bella is not the submissive one in this relationship, it is Edward who bows to her every desire and command. Another thing that bothered me was her statement that "She finally becomes both woman and mother simultaneously"(444). Does this mean that a girl cannot become a woman unless she is a mother? What about all the women who choose not to have children or the women who cannot have children? She even at one point calls Bella obsessive of Edward, but in turn is it not actually Edward who is obsessed with Bella? He watches her in her sleep! I enjoyed reading this article because I believe Jones' reader response of Twilight to actually be completely wrong. She missed the love and instead deemed it obsession with Edward and the idea of preserving beauty, but I believe she wants to live forever, not because she wants to stay young and beautiful, but because she can then love forever. Although I could be reading too much into this I wanted to know what you guys thought specifically about Jones' interpretation of Twilight rather then the fan fiction's she mentions. Thank you! -Kayleigh

Chapter 6 Reading

As a writer, I found the section on affective stylistics most interesting because its cool to think that the way a text is written can mimic, or even moreso, add an extra complimentary layer to the theme/meaning/purpose of the text. I mean, for example, how cool is it, and how logical would it to be to write a first person story about a clean-freak scientist with OCD that writes just as he is: sterile, dry, calculated, and scientific. It wouldnt make sense for a clean-freak scientist to write any other way about his story. I feel like there is even more to be played with here in my own fiction. 

What is the difference between reader-oriented, reality-oriented, and experience-oriented responses to texts?  Which does a subjective reader-response promote?

A reader-oriented response deals with one's reading experience and how it relates to their personal memories, interests, and experiences. The reality-oriented reading is based on current events going on in the world. An experience-oriented response focuses on the connection between specific passages to a reader's feelings, thoughts, and associations.

In Bleich’s experiment, why did the students’ “meaning statements” correlate with or relate to their “response statements”?  What does this show us about objective vs. subjective readings of texts?

Their meaning statements and response statements correlated because each statement stemmed from a part of the text that individual the connected to. No matter for what purpose the statement was for--whether to objectively or subjectively remark on the text--they drew it from the part of the text they related to the most. 

How does our own psychology affect our interpretation of texts?  

Our psychology affects our interpretation because it can allow us to connect more, or in a different way, to a character or situation than another person without similar psychological experiences. This difference in backgrounds can lead to a difference in readings.

Reader Response Criticism

Reader Response Criticism

I enjoyed this much more than I did New Critical Theory.  Initially, I was skeptical.  I was thinking, "Who cares about the response of readers, other than book clubs?"  I kept reading, and got to this sentence: "Reader response theory...maintains that what a text is cannot be separated from what it does" (162).

Transactional reader response theory:

I liked this type of criticism, because it focuses on the relationship built between the text and the reader.  The idea of the text being a stimulus, causing us to all react in our own ways.  We all have our own story, our own triggers, our own experiences, and it makes sense that our reactions to a text would all be different.  The term blueprint is also interesting; as we are drawing our own conclusions and meanings, we hit something within the text that will invariably bring us back from our own reading, redirecting us back to the facts of the story.

Psychological reader response theory:

Again, our own triggers and baggage effect the way in which we read a text.  The concepts of defense mode, fantasy mode, and transformation mode are fascinating.  I like that our own analysis comes from our fears and anxieties, which we calm by looking at alternate readings of a text, and then we can finally integrate our fears with our coping mechanisms to formulate a final analysis.  I like that we can read a text and finally get back to my comfort zone by thinking about the author, but I am reluctant to think about people reading my analysis and getting too far into my own head.

Social reader response theory:

This form of criticism should be an obvious one, but it isn't one that I've thought of before.  Of course I bring all of the things I've been taught, both in my own life and in educational situations, to my own interpretation.  I'll have to read The Great Gatsby again, or maybe The Catcher in the Rye, this time forgetting everything I've ever learned about them.

Affective Stylistics and Subjective reader response theory:

I'm pretty shaky on these two forms.

In affective stylistics, I understand that it is considered to be a "slow motion" read through, considering each line and the way it affects the reader. I'm having trouble understanding exactly how this is useful, or even relevant.

In subjective reader response criticism, I understand that the reader responses are the text to be analyzed.  Again, I'm not seeing the use for this.

Transactional, psychological, and social reader responses I get.  If used by a reader, thinking of these while reading will help you become a better reader, and will help you to see things differently within a text.  If used by critics, it can be used to understand the types of readers of a book as well as the author, and meaning can be drawn from that.  I'm not sure about these other two.

Reader Response Theory

The section on psychological reader response was my favorite section due to my status as a former psychology major. According to Normand Holland, we respond to literature the same way we respond to real life events. The transaction that occurs between us and the text works to satisfy our needs, which are dependent on our individual psychology. Holland uses the example of Pecola in The Bluest Eye (a young abuse victim), and how a reader who had been abused would have to "cope" with the emotions that Pecola's character stirs up. This type of criticism reveals more about the reader than the text, because depending on the person you analyze, the results will always be different, even if you use the exact same text.

Interpretive communities are groups of people who use the same techniques when responding to texts. They are formed from institutions such as colleges, religions, cultures, and philosophies. Readers might not even realize that they belong to an interpretive community. We are predisposed to use the techniques of the community we belong to. Fish's experiment with his two classes shows how simple it is to guide people's interpretations by doing something as simple as giving them one bit of false information.

Reading in the efferent mode means that we focus on the facts that the text tells us. When we read in the aesthetic mode, we are reading in a more personal way, as well as looking for the meaning behind the text.  The efferent mode depends on determinate meaning, which refers to what we can know from the information provided to us. This type of meaning isn't really negotiable, because it comes from facts clearly stated in the text. Indeterminate meaning is more subjective, because is depends on on our own interpretations, or what we "read between the lines".

Theory

I definitely enjoyed reading the theories of Reader-Response Criticism more than I enjoyed New Criticism. I really liked reading the Psychological Reader-Response theory because I also relate what I have read back to myself.

Our psychology affects our interpretations of text because our personal experiences give the text meaning. We project ourselves into the texts we read and we identify ourselves through them. Norman Holland said that reader interpretations revel more about themselves than about the text, I believe this, because I am a victim of sexual assault, so reading text about sexual assault for me brings up emotional moments and memories compared to someone who is reading the same text and has never been sexually assaulted.

An interpretive community is a community of people who share the same interpretive strategies of analyzing a text. Stanley Fish believed that everyone’s “individual subjective” responses to literature were just products of an interpretive community. They condition our reading because we learn to interpret a text based on the way someone else interprets theirs. An example of this can be seen in school.

Discovering an author’s identify theme means to discover their thoughts, feelings, fears, etc based on their personal experiences that they project into their own writings. 

Critical Theory Today

Good Morning,

I wanted to begin by pointing out how much I enjoyed reading this aspect of the book especially the part on Psychological reader-response theory. I enjoyed this part so much mainly because this is something that I always thought and i always find myself, during reader-response, relating the text back to my own life.

Now efferent is the focus on information within the text and aesthetic is when a reader experiences a personal relationship to the text that focuses our attention on the emotional subtleties of its language and encourages us to make judgments. Determinate reading refers back to the facts of the test and indeterminate meaning is the "gaps" in the text such as actions that are not clearly explained or have multiple explanations.

Our psychology affects the meaning of texts based off of personal life affiliations and our identity theme. There is the belief that we project out identity theme into every situation we encounter and perceive the world through our own psychological experience. For example, if in class we are reading a poem about death and one student has recently had a close relative die they make perceive the text differently then another student in the class who has never experience a death within their family tree. Discovering an authors identity theme means to understand their fears, defenses, needs, and desires that they may project into their own writings. This goes back to the belief that some people have that you cannot write about what you do not know, therefore, deep down inside each author has experienced, to some degree, what they are writing about. I am also a firm believer of this fact.

Everyone stay safe if you are traveling today and I will see you all Wednesday!
-Kayleigh

Essay on "Time"

In the poem "Time", the speaker is a man whose loss of innocence was the end of the world. Thus, his view of the effect of lost innocence for a hypothetical, abstract boy he portrays is negative. The fact that the abstract boy's loss of innocence is portrayed as being somber illustrates that the speaker feels on a whole that the loss of innocence is a terrible thing. Personification, diction, and finally, form and punctuation, are the literary devices employed in “Time” to portray innocence and the universality of innocence lost.

The use of personification in stanza two of “Time” establishes the innocence of the speaker as a boy--an innocence which will be lost at the conclusion of the stanza. In the second stanza, the speaker describes his past self. As a boy, the "grass lived" (12-13) and the "trains whistled" (13) in his world of childlike wonderment. Moments later the speaker (as a boy) witnesses a river "choked" (14) with old vehicles. The personification of a "choked" river here is perhaps the very last time the speaker personified an object. This can't be known for sure, but the choking suggests a death, not just of the river, but also of innocence. Thus, the personified, figurative death of the river in stanza two illustrates the death of the speaker's innocence.

The diction in the poem points to the universality of the death of innocence and how every young person has—and will—experience this death. The poem starts off with a glimpse into the future, "The years to come..." (1), where a boy will "clamber" (5) up on top of an empty boxcar and "gaze" (8) upon a river. The use of the word "will" twice in the first stanza—"will sometime stay" (4) and "will run" (6)—signifies that the events being described have yet to happen. The protagonist knows what will happen because the death of innocence is inevitable. In the second stanza the speaker remarks about his past as a boy and how he "took that kind of walk" (11).  The “walk” is parallel to the future boy’s “run”; as both actions lead them to a river that will take their innocence. What's important, however, is the effect the river had on the speaker: the day he witnessed the "choked" river "was the day the world ended" (15). Effectively, through diction, the poet was able to foreshadow the future (the future boy's unique "end of the world" event) based on the protagonist’s past experience with the "end of the world". Therefore, the inevitability of the death of innocence is noted.

The form and punctuation employed in the poem pinpoints the different phases of the process of the death of innocence. The last phase--which will be called the rumination phase--is chronologically first in the poem. The speaker ruminates that the "years to come" (1) will "[in] sometime stay, rusted still" (4). Before the presence of the semi-colon, the first half of stanza one is filled with words that connote oldness/physical maturation/immobility, such as: "empty" (1), "waiting" (2), "forgets" (2), "stay" (4), "rusted" (4), and "still" (4). Thus, the semi-colon--a punctuation mark that often links two independent clauses closely related in thought, but are often opposite in nature--is appropriate after this first half because the second half that follows is full of words that connote youth/mobility, such as: "little" (5), "boy" (5), "clambers" (5), "run" (6), "along" (7), "jump" (7). In short, the poet's semi-colon marks a direct shift in time and maturity that allows the reader to more clearly separate the rumination phase from the pre-maturation phase.

Secondarily, the poet plays with enjambment, indentation, and end-stopped lines to highlight various nuances of the loss of innocence. The enjambment of line 8--"and gaze down...that rive" (8)--into line 9, "near every town" (9), places dramatic emphasis on line 9. This calculated emphasis is crucial to the poem because this line singularly illustrates the speaker's argument: that the loss of innocence is universal. This is because, metaphorically, the river that takes innocence is in every town. Therefore every young person will encounter it—which clearly depicts the universality of innocence lost. The indentation of line 10, "Once when I was a boy" (10)--aside from marking the narrative of a new boy (the speaker himself)--suggests a vast distance between the speaker as a boy and the speaker as he is now, an old man with a vastly different worldview. This distance, thus, is indicative of a disconnect between himself now and himself as a boy. The last major effect--end-stopped lines--dovetails well with the effect of the punctuation, thus both devices will be addressed together. The most important instance of end-stopping occurs in the last two lines of the poem, "The river was choked with old Chevies and Fords./And that was the day the world ended" (14-15). Very obviously the use of endstopping emboldens the word "ended" (15). However, the more powerful end-stop--ending with a period--occurs in line 14, where the line--which could have flowed into the dependent clause--is cut short. Cutting it short gives one the feeling of something—a life, for example—being cut prematurely, or more graphically, a river choking to death. The river's death implies the death of the speaker's inner boy--a way of life taken too soon that cannot be renewed. This explanation is why line 15 "And that was the day the world ended" (15) is the perfect way to end this poem.

Indeed, the end of the world at the end of "Time" is the perfect thought for this poem to end with being as though, textually, the loss of innocence is the death of something happy and blissfully ignorant. The jaded tone of the protagonist suggests the heavy toll the burden of knowledge and adulthood takes on him. For the protagonist to ruminate on the future of a boy who has yet to exist illustrates somewhat of an obsession with his own past as a boy, which he felt was ruined by the realization/witnessing of something that remains ambiguous. Through personification, diction, form and punctuation, the poet is able to establish a protagonist who views the loss of innocence as a negative thing.

Reflection

New Criticism is marked by as much of a closed, objective reading as possible, meaning the absence of any thoughts, feelings, or opinions of the critic that go against the grain of the work. The New Critic has to validate every literary device used to best capture the purpose of the work they compose. Also, the critic can only work with the text—no outside background information regarding the author, his time era, etc. can be used. This is because it is unimportant in the view of the New Critic, who believes the work’s message transcends the poet and time itself, which consequently leads to the universality of the work itself. As a New Critic I had to leave out speculation about the author; neglect reading about the author; personal experiences; my personal opinions (for example, losing innocence can be a good thing); etc. There were things I had to include however, as a New Critic: emphasis on universality and emphasis on ambiguity. I focused more on the latter, however I brought up some ambiguity in my original draft in regards to the mystery of what each boy saw in his river.  

Also for Julia :)

[I also left this as a comment earlier, but idk which one of these gets more views so here's in case a separate post gets more..]

Just some suggestions..hope they help !

1) The thesis could be a tad more specific, maybe instead of saying "words" you could use the more literarily connotative "diction". 

2) First topic paragraph should mention father as protagonist and/or the lack of appreciation for him, and how the tactile imagery (warmth, coldness) point to that. The rest of the paragraph is solid, analytical, and illustrates this topic sentence I suggest very well, I think.

3) Second body is very good with inferences and analyzation, itd be a good thing to grab a little bit more evidence from the poem, however to back you up. The topic sentence should be more specific and make a claim--which you go on to make undoubtedly well I think. 

4) Great third body. The topic sentence does make a claim--your claim of the use of "tone"--but in my opinion, its very subtle. If you want to make your claim noticeable and undeniable, you could do something along the lines of "tone in this poem does/establishes..."

5) You will want to make some sort of connection with universality, even if you merely just mention it--as its important to New Critics--which, I feel, would be best in the last body paragraph.

Good job overall :))